


Gone

by morningstarzip



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, druggings, insane asylum
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-06-28
Updated: 2011-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 19:37:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningstarzip/pseuds/morningstarzip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is kidnapped out from under them, and Eames is determined to move heaven and earth to find him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone

“I have to tell you something and killing me won't do you any good,” the Chemist told them.

Words were hard to accept for Eames to accept with snail-trails of Arthur's blood and brain sliding slowly down his cheek. A chip of what had been Arthur's skull was needling the cornre of his left eye. Around him, Cobb and Ariadne wore matching looks of disbelief, Cobb's gun pointed at this shit-for-brains face just as his was. Only they didn't have Arthur's brains drying slowly on their faces. Eames had been sitting directly behind the pointman when the Chemist they had hired for this job had turned around in the front seat and shot Arthur point blank in the face.

“Talk fast,” Cobb ground out.

Eames didn't trust his voice. It's a dream, only a dream, he reminded himself. That bone chip kept aggravating the soft tissue in the cornre of his eye and his wiped absentmindedly at it. He could feel it drying on the back of his hand like a grain of sand. Arthur is topside and probably slitting this arsehole's throat for that.

The Chemist nodded slowly, letting the gun drop from his fingers. He kept his hands raised, and Eames had to admit that was probably the only smart thing he had done today. “You've all been drugged, all of you. I had to make sure.”

“You sent Arthur into Limbo,” Cobb said in a deceptively blank voice that gave no hint of the horror he knew would be down there waiting.

The Chemist shook his head, eyes wide as Eames gun barrel nudged the sharp point of his cheekbone hard. “No, not him. That would damage him. The client specifically asked for him conscious and aware of his surroundings. I gave him a paralysing agent, but not a sedative. He's awake now, but unable to move. All of you have another five to six hours asleep.”

Part of Eames' mind that he couldn't control observed that this had been a training session for the mazes that should have only lasted five minutes topside at the most, not five or more hours. The gun pressed hard enough to leave a small circular bruise on the pale man's cheek. His thoughts fastened on one ominous word. “Client?”

The Chemist nodded slowly, Eames' gun barrel scraping against his cheek. “Client.”

“Who?”

“I can't tell you that.”

Eames' grin was ghastly, flat and pleased in an ugly way that made Cobb give him a second look, the gun in his hand wavering ever so slightly.

The Chemist, the man they had taken a busy Yusuf's word to hire, smiled back at him. A bluish foam that smelled of rotting almonds began to push its way through his teeth. Poison. He ground out his last words in this dream. “He said he saw him in a dream and wanted him.”

“Fuck!”

Eames didn't feel Cobb's hands on his shoulders or Ariadne's short nailed fingers digging in through his horrible paisley shirt that Arthur would tease him about and trying to drag him back into his seat as Eames grabbed the man and started hitting him. Bone had been driven in between his knuckles before they made him let go.

\----------

Arthur awoke and blinked, the world coming through in smeary colours. His body refused to respond to him, leaving him only to blink stupidly and try to turn his head to see the others. It was so much effort with so little reward. He knew what it felt like to be drugged, and this was it. None of his muscles were responding, everything about him loose and numb. Someone was going to suffer. The stupid and meaningless thought that only Eames was allowed to make him feel this way wound through his dulled mind. What a stupid thought.

“This one?”

The men were wearing masks as they stood over the still sleeping team.

A gun was pointed at Cobb's head.

“No,” Arthur croaked, throat dry.

The Chemist that they hadn't even bothered to learn the name of (but had been highly recommended by Yusuf) jerked awake and shook his head when the question was repeated. He pointed a finger at Arthur instead. “Him. He's the one he wanted.”

Unkind hands seized Arthur, jerking out the line and tossing it aside. There were three of them, or so Arthur's blurry vision told him. One picked him up and slung him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. It gave him an all too clear view of the second (or third) thug pressing a gun to Eames' forehead. Even in sleep, the Forger looked upset. His mouth couldn't work anymore than his limbs could to tell them not to.

“I want my money.”

If it weren't for his suspicion that the Chemist had led them all to this, Arthur could have loved him for the distraction. Laid across the thug's back, he could feel the mostly silent laughter. Guns that had been about to kill his team turned on the greedy bastard and cut him down instead. There were screams, but Arthur didn't care. Let the fucker burn for all he cared. The bastard had probably sent Eames and the others to Limbo to cover his tracks. All he cared about was getting something of his body to move.

Nothing did.

A hand seized his jaw, twisting his head up and holding there until Arthur's eyes managed to focus on the thug's face. It wasn't a familiar one.

“This is the one the boss wanted?” Thug #2 asked.

“Arthur, yeah. Pointman. Dresses in suits. Looks like a teenager with dark hair and eyes. Gotta be the one,” Thug #1 said, giving Arthur's jaw a hard squeeze and shake.

The motion made him dizzy, everything around him blurring out as the darkness pushed back in.

\----------

When Arthur awoke, he was strapped to a bed. Rough bands of leather with heavy brass buckles had been fastened around his wrists, ankles, waist and chest. A man was looming over him, his voice vaguely familiar. It was a mark if he remembered right, one from months ago. Hands cupped his face, thumbs stroking his cheeks and temples. “I've waited so long,” the man crooned. “You were in my dreams, and I saw you. You were my angel, protecting me when no one else could. Do you remember?”

Arthur did. It was a mark from a month after the inception job. The man had been a prominent psychologist that his ex-wife had wanted information on to take him for everything she could in the divorce. Arthur's job had been to pretend to protect him while Eames' Forge of his mistress and Cobb had gotten his secrets. Turns out the man had been secretly gay and 'enjoying' himself with patients at the private institution that he ran.

'Fucked' didn't quite cover it.

“He'll kill you,” Arthur whispered, flinching away from the man's hand that stroked his hair and the madness in his eyes. It was too much like Mal's towards the end.

“Oh darling,” the mark whispered, mussing Arthur's hair with each pass. “They can't find us here. I remember you, and I'll keep you safe.”

“And then I'll laugh,” Arthur hissed.

The mark... the head of the Glenville Psychiatric Institute... smiled indulgently and began drawing a clear fluid from a vial down in a syringe. “I can see you're still upset. It will be all right. I promise.”

\----------------

It was dark in the warehouse as Eames awoke along with the others only to find Arthur gone and a dead former Chemist in his place. The unforgiving clock told them that six hours had passed. That was more than enough time for them to be gone, be anymore in the world.

\----------------

_“You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'”_  
George Bernard Shaw

He's four years old and sitting in the horse barn at his grandfather's side. There are pricks of the straw bale under him as Arthur shifts to gaze up at the old man, watching him study the two year old horses out in the exercising yard with the rheumy eyes of approaching old age. Even with their yellowed corneas and the fine threads of red in his grandfather's eyes, Arthur never doubted the old man saw more than he ever would.

“Doesn't the jockey's crop hurt the horses?” Arthur feels and hears himself ask as if he were picking up some conversation he doesn't remember them starting. It's how he knows it's a dream. There's an understated depression in that since his grandfather died over twenty years ago. This was the last conversation they would have.

“No,” his grandfather says, voice rattling around in his chest with a harsh cough of a long-time smoker. Funny how it would be a horse hoof to the temple that would kill the old man, not the lung cancer he had probably been courting for years. “They're high on adrenaline, you see? Could shoot one, and they'd never know it while they're running. The jockey taps them with it, and it tells the horse to shift lead foot. It's like shifting gears in a car. The jockey can feel it in how the horse flows, how it's running.”

Arthur says nothing, only watching the man's face with an intensity that a child couldn't have.

His grandfather nods as if Arthur said something, following a script that doesn't matter now. It's more memory than dream. “Exactly. You can feel when a car needs to change gear same as you can a horse needs to change leads until it finds its stride and grabs that bit in its teeth to let loose like a train hitting top speed.”

“What do you do then?” Arthur asks.

His grandfather grins, showing teeth gone yellow with age and nicotine. There's something mean and slanting in that grin that Arthur overlooked as a child and the warmth of memory lets him ignore now. “You loosen the reins so the horse has its head, and you let that bitch _roll_.”

He felt it years later when he stole his first car at the age of fourteen. All the horses and that old Kentucky farm that had been in his family for generations were gone and sold then, a combination of drinking and gambling (and he suspected a bad drug habit) on his parents', aunts and uncles parts. A family was a beast with many ugly heads. With the car roaring (a Mustang of all the makes and models that he could have boosted) and his foot on the pedal, Arthur had felt that _shift_ in the sound of the engine and the feel of it.

He had felt it.

“We need to get to Dom's house, Arthur,” Eames said from his side, strapped in the Mustang's passenger seat.

He glanced over at the forger and beyond him. Bullets were pinging off the body of the auto from all sides, and unless Arthur missed his guess, that was a fully armed F-16 Raptor flying on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge they were currently roaring down at top speed. He had to admit that the pregnant woman in the van they had just passed was a damn good shot, barely missing Eames' head by a hair. Literally. Then again, why wouldn't his projections be? The F16 that was pushing ahead and then turning in mid-air with its rockets coming to bear may have been overkill though.

“Better make sure your belt is tight,” Arthur said, glancing down at the speedometer. 80 mph without a cop in sight on a sunny California day with relatively no traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge.

They couldn't even construct a believable dream to try and con information out of him. No one put the effort into it these days or took pride in their work! Amateurs. Arthur would have put at least two days into finding the right lever to use for the forger and at least told the architect to go with a generic place instead of a specific one if they didn't know where they were going. On second thought, Arthur decided that it was a good thing that they hadn't even picked the right state to try and work Cobb's address out of him. The forger replicating Eames probably wasn't a good thing, but he refused to read anything into it. It was just bad luck, not knowledge that they had used Eames.

They roared ahead the few cars they passed sending a hail of bullets after them. He felt it then, the shift. Thumbing open the top of the gearshift, his fingertip rested on the nitro button.

“You're not even trying anymore, are you?” he asked the forger currently being Eames and hit the button. The car felt like it went light speed, following the path of Arthur turning the wheel as it crossed the solid double line and sped right into the grill of an oncoming eighteen wheeler. The world went white around him.

\------------

“Son of a bitch!”

The extractor wasn't taking these repeated failures well, Arthur decided. If he had the ability to speak, Arthur would have suggested that that the extractor turn this into a teaching moment, instructing his team on what went wrong and where. Of course, there was such a thing as too stupid to learn, and Arthur was beginning to have the sneaking suspicion that he had finally encountered it in person. The attempts so far had all the finesse of using a hammer to get to a marble inside a Waterford crystal decanter.

The being unable to so much as speak may be getting to him, Arthur decided, if he was making comparisons like that.

Boredom was relieved a few seconds later when the extractor punched him in the face a few times. Arthur's lips mashed back against his teeth, filling his mouth with the taste of blood. One good thing about being utterly paralysed was that he didn't feel much of anything besides pressure.

“I want to fucking know where Cobb is!” the extractor shouted into his face. While his body might be paralysed, Arthur's sense of smell was running on all cylinders and unless he missed his guess, the extractor had been eating something with too much garlic and tuna.

“It doesn't do any good to hit him,” Doctor Ashton said, pulling Arthur from the extractor's grasp and laying him back down on the bed with gently.

A fingertip probed Arthur's bleeding lips, and if Arthur had been capable of biting, the good doctor would have been short at least one finger. The blood smeared by the touch was cold on his mouth. It took work to keep his eyes carefully blank.

“He needs to tell us something, _now_ ,” the extractor hissed at the doctor, poking him in the chest. He reminded Arthur a little of Cobb, but not enough to have stopped Arthur from strangling him barehanded the third time down and slamming his head into a pulp in a cardoor the sixth. The squinting thing had to be a professional risk.

The doctor didn't give the extractor or the still silent forger and architect any attention. His gaze was locked on the slow smearing of blood from Arthur split lips down his chin by his fingers. “I may have to put a stitch in these,” he said.

Only Arthur could see how empty the doctor's eyes were, how distant from anything resembling sanity.

 _Mal_ was all Arthur could think, how she had look at and through him the week before she killed herself and tried to take Dom with her. In the short time Arthur had between when he had woken up and been spoon-fed his breakfast by Doctor Ashton then to here, he had wracked his memories for any sign that something had gone wrong with their work on the doctor that would have led to this. It had been two levels, painfully simple and easily done. There had been nothing approaching the intensity of an inception. The only interaction he and the doctor had was Arthur leading him through the maze to a 'safe' cell to wait and hide while Eames and Cobb had gotten the secrets. If the others had seen anything off, they hadn't told him. _This shouldn't have happened_ was the only conclusion he kept coming up with.

If Arthur had been able to speak, he might have advised the extractor to shut the fuck up and stop antagonizing an already rabid dog. Maybe. The extractor had beaten him to death in the seventh attempt when Arthur refused to tell him where Eames favourite pub in Mombasa was. Feeling one's ribs splinter under another's fists had a way of destroying the desire to render assistance.

“I do have one last sedative you might use,” the doctor said slowly, drawing a whorl through Arthur's blood. “It works very well with the mentally disturbed, letting them tell a psychologist what went wrong. It doesn't allow for any lies or deceptions.”

“Should have fucking told us about this one in the first place,” the forger snapped off to their side as he threw himself back in his chair.

Arthur supposed the forger was still a little upset about the whole electrocution on the first attempt, hanging on the second, buried alive on the third... and it just went from there. The forger hadn't experienced the best of days. On the good side, Arthur was ten for ten on killing him. It brightened Arthur's day remarkably.

The good feelings went away as the doctor moved around the room, swapping the previously clear fluid that travelled down the lines for a purplish one. He drew the needle out of Arthur's hand, re-seating it on the other with a murmur about needing to find a better vein. He started the device and Arthur waited for the sleep to come. And waited. And waited.

Wetness traced down his wrist from where the needle had been taped to but not put in his skin.

“We have an incinerator here,” Doctor Ashton said quietly to him as he sat back down at Arthur's side. His fingers slid into the pointman's hair, drawing through it as if he were petting a cat. “I'll put three of them in it afterwards and keep the fourth. He's about your size, and with enough acid application, I could convince the casual observer the he is you. I have investors, you see. They financed this project. My now ex-wife depleted most of my finances, but I'm sure you know that by now.”

Arthur tried to look to his left as he heard the forger began to choke. He couldn't manage it with his muscles still unresponsive. The sound was familiar enough though.

Ashton pulled the surgical tape off the needle and line, tossing it aside carelessly. “I was looking for you after you vanished. You were too real to be a dream. I couldn't let go of the first person to have ever helped me. You tried to save me. This Cobb, he forced you to do all of that, didn't he? I've seen his pictures that they had. He is older than you, tricking and manipulating you. I knew it, you see! I knew you were reaching out to me in that dream, seeing someone who could finally save you.”

The hot light of a fanatic had replaced the awful emptiness in the doctor's eyes. The other three were twitching and making those watery suffocating sounds now. In a few minutes, Arthur had little doubt the extractor, the pointman, the forger and the architect would all be dead. All he could do was watch Ashton as he pulled a small tray towards him and started threading a curved suture needle with black thread.

“They _made_ you do it. I know, my dearest. You're safe now. I have you. It will take some deprogramming, I know. I won't give up on you. I'll give the investors a few addresses, and that will be the end of it. I have a former patient, a paranoid schizophrenic that looks like your man Cobb. People always mistake him for that actor. What was his name? DeCapo? He has two small children that live with him now and his elderly parents. It should match well enough. I made sure a week ago that he was sent a placebo instead of his usual medications. By the time your enemies get there, he should be quite a match for them. That should satisfy them that the forty million dollar investment was enough. You've made many enemies, although it was probably all that Cobb's fault.”

The scope of it left Arthur feeling slightly ill. The hooked needle descended, and all he felt was a brief pressure with a sort of slide as the thread was drawn through his lower lip.

“I used to love reading Ian Fleming's works,” Ashton said, his attention seeming focused on Arthur's lips. “I know you helped my ex-wife bring me down, but there were many things she didn't know, and none of you found. The Glenville Psychiatric Institution was my main hospital, but not the only one. This one is half a country away. It isn't listed on anything as 'mine'. It's amazing what favours people will trade for an open script for narcotics. False identification and diplomas are the least of it. This one is a smaller hospital, only about twenty beds with ten filled right now.”

Ashton finished with the second stitch, cutting the thread off closely. He sat the needle aside and stroked the side of Arthur's face.

“It was very easy to make an Arthur-No-Last-Name vanish here, although your first name is now 'Michael'. You were arrested about two days ago by the state troopers and remanded here until I feel you are mentally competent. I would have liked to let you keep 'Arthur', but for now it has to be Michael Ashton. I'm Doctor Alexander Davis here instead of Doctor Geoff Ashton. Your friends might come looking, and while I don't think they'll ever discover I have two other institutions that I hold directorship over under different names, they may.”

Arthur's lips finally moved, turning down in a frown. He let it go instantly, wanting to keep the illusion that he was still fully paralysed. He had found out about Ashton's two other little pits in his investigations, but all those notes had been destroyed once the job was over, burnt down to ashes. It was habit, nothing to link any of them to the mark.

“I saw that!” Ashton said gleefully, touching Arthur's lips again. The pad of his thumb ran over the new stitches. “I knew it was starting to wear off. I'm glad. I love the sound of your voice, and no one will hear you here. Screaming is normal. I've already arranged it so that the staff thinks you're delusional, that you think you're some sort of dream warrior. They won't be interacting with you much anyways. You're a _special_ case, all my own.”

\-------------------------

“There's nothing here.”

Dominic Cobb's voice was loud to Eames senses in the emptiness of Arthur's flat in New York City. It was the closest one, the one that had been used in the past two jobs that had kept them here. The three of them had searched everything, even Arthur's beloved moleskin for entries that something was wrong, that someone was hunting him. Eames could tell them that no one had been, but he didn't. Every night for the past two months, he had been here with Arthur.

“There has to be something,” Ariadne said, opening another of Arthur's books to search through it for a hidden note. “This didn't come out of nowhere.”

It didn't. That much rang true with Eames. He sat on the end of their bed, hating that inanimate object as he did for all the memories it held. Twenty hours ago, he had been pinning Arthur down under him as the pointman begged for his cock. That stupid bed didn't know that someone had taken Arthur, that he was gone. All it knew was that nineteen hours ago, Arthur had been drawing on his back with that fountain pen, adding to the loops and whirls of ink There were spots of that black ink on the sheets that Dominic had fastened on until Eames had discreetly steered him elsewhere. Cobb didn't need to know that one of Arthur's kinks was drawing on Eames back, making his own tattoos among the real ones.

Eames swore that one day he was going to not shower and keep those marks, having a tattoo artist make real Arthur's signature at the swell of his arse.

“Computer search is empty,” Ariadne said over her shoulder. “He's wiped them all.”

Of course he did, Eames told himself. Arthur always did when a job was drawing to a close.

“Nothing in his books,” Cobb said, flipping pages in Arthur's moleskin. “All he has are the correct client specs and a note saying ' _Davis_ '. Eames? Did you find anything?”

Eames didn't answer at first, stretching out on the bed and inhaling the last traces of Arthur on the pillows. The name rang a distant bill. Arthur wrote it down for a reason, leaving it despite whatever mission is was being over. Something had rang a danger bell in the pointman's head, enough that he made a note of it. Now... now it meant something. What?

“Eames?” Cobb asked, peering around the cornre at him.

Eames ignored the voice, letting himself lapse into memory. The name meant something, but what? A memory flickered in his mind, the scritch of a fountain pen scratching into his skin coming with it.

_“Three, Eames. Why does he have all three under his leadership?”_

_“I don't know, darling.”_

_The glass etching acid fine pain of the fountain pen cut through his thoughts as Arthur wrote his name across Eames' spine just below the swell of his buttocks._

_“Ariadne's maze is just the one. Let's hope he bites for it.”_

“Eames?” Cobb asked, kneeling in front of the blank eyed forger now, shaking him gently.

“Wha?” Eames blinked, coming out and frowning down at Cobb. Memory was powerful, and he knew it.

“What is it?”

“'Davis' was one of Ashton pseudonyms along with Brighton. The psychiatrist job,” Eames said, pressing a hand to his forehead where a headache was starting to thunder. He could still feel the tip of the fountain pen digging into his back. “It bothered Arthur. He wanted to know 'why'.”

“Why?”

“Because it was a mystery, and Arthur couldn't let it go. It was his job not to.”

\----------------

“There you go, dearest,” Ashton said as he tucked the blankets around Arthur in his solitary room. The straps were back, locking him down. The drugs had been dialled back some, enough for Arthur to speak, but little more. “You need a good night's rest. Tomorrow we can start on us. The bad men are all gone now.”

With Ashton looming over him, the bands locked firmly around him, Arthur wet his lips with the tip of his tongue, exhaling slowly. It never failed to turn Eames on.

Ashton's pupils widened, blown wide with want and his mouth pressed against Arthur's hard enough to break the stitches.

And Arthur bit him. Hard. Lips and a bit of Ashton's cheek fell victim to Arthur's teeth. A sign had to be sent out, a flag sent up the pole.

The doctor jerked back, eyes wide with surprise and anger. His hands were quick to strike Arthur, rocking his head from side to side. Dizziness and the medications still in his system left Arthur trying to focus on the doctor above him.

“See what you made me do?” Ashton asked with false kindness, fingers pressing hand into Arthur's cheekbone. The skin had been split by the first hit, spilling blood down across his skin. “You made me do that. Why do you want me to hurt you?”

A slow blink and Arthur tried to focus on the world around him with the ringing in his ears from those few punches. He was sure his stitches had broken open.

“See what you made me do?” the doctor asked again, gripping Arthur hard enough to leave bruises by the shoulders.

Arthur knew he was in trouble.

\---------------

__

"Forgive me." (pause) "I said, forgive me."  
"I heard you."  
Endgame, Beckett

Doctor Geoff Ashton checked Arthur one last time before readying for bed himself. The dream-thief... or what was it that they had called Arthur? A pointman? Either way he was admitted under a false name, one that no one would think to check for. The only one who would ever know Arthur was here was the co-Director who was leaving tomorrow morning for a three week trip to the Caribbean, although he knew Arthur as 'Michael Ashton', a transient brought in by the state troopers. He hadn't been able to resist giving his love his last name. It was a little early in their relationship for something like that, but Geoff knew he was in love.

Of course, accidents happened on the high seas, especially when he had paid good money out of the forty million to make sure it did. Delving into the world of these dream thieves had given him all sorts of exposure to new and frankly dangerous people. It had also taught him that it was best to tie up loose ends whenever he could. Geoff had been a bit put out to find out that those hunting Dominic Cobb had killed his former patient and his family including the children. True, his former patient had been in something of a paranoid frenzy, but Geoff wasn't sure that excused killing children. On the upside, his _investors_ were convinced they had gotten -the- Dominic Cobb as well as badly acid burned 'Arthur'.

The doctor considered himself lucky that these dream sorts couldn't do blood tests or scan fingerprints. They didn't even find it odd that the team they had been using weren't communicating with them. It was the perfect kind of grounds for a predator of Ashton's like, or so he thought. After all, he was the good and legal respected doctor while these other _sorts_ couldn't exactly go to the police, could they? And really, if they were doing illegal things to survive in the first place, they couldn't be as clever as a doctor, could they?

Switching on his television, Geoff studied the image presented. Arthur was covered with a warm blanket, sleeping in the narrow bed with the restraints in place. It wouldn’t do for Arthur to wake up disoriented and fall out. The medication that Geoff had decided to use on him until the toxicology reports came back were notorious for befuddling the mind and throwing off a person’s balance. Who knew if that horrid Cobb had been using other types of drugs to keep Arthur in line? It was all for the best. He was already sorting through the drug options that would go best with an aggressive therapy attack

Being one of the heads of a tiny but respectable mental institution had gotten him his own room there for when he had shift-work, usually on the rare times he had been able to escape his bitch of an ex-wife for some... recreation. Those boys under his care had all been willing, waiting for him. They were his patients, and they loved him. The doctor had always been a healer, making things better and helping.

 _What happened to ‘I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm’?_ asked an insidious voice in his head.

He hated that inner voice. It was best ignored. Only people with mental problems heard voices. That hadn't stopped this one from speaking up more and more often.

“I am taking care of the sick,” he muttered to himself as he slid into bed.

Hooking his television up to the closed circuit cameras he’d had installed in Arthur’s secret room had been easy enough. There was no reason security needed to be troubled with or even know of their special visitor. That secret room in itself was a wonder. One had to know where the passage was to even begin to search for the door. It had been specifically installed for a case like Arthur’s where a highly visible public figure didn’t want their image ruined. Up on the screen, Arthur's face was a study of peacefulness, dark lashes resting against pale cheeks marred with a blush of bruising where Arthur had-

Geoff frowned to himself. Arthur had hurt himself. That was right. Arthur had smashed his head into the wall. The mentally ill did that at times. They hurt themselves. If any speck of memory of Geoff himself punching the deeply drugged Arthur tried to rise up, it wasn't dismissed immediately. He was a doctor and wouldn't do something like lose his temper with an obviously sick and most likely brainwashed patient. Never him. Arthur had hurt himself. The poor confused creature. Asleep now, Arthur looked innocent and tired to Geoff's eyes, in need of care. Special care.

Nodding to himself, Geoff pulled his blanket up over himself, watching the television until he fell asleep.

\---------------------------------

“Eames.”

The worst things in life began with phone calls, the voice on the other end sounding ever so slightly strangled with tears, Eames decided. The same sort of voice had awoken him late at night to tell him that Mal Cobb was dead and that Dominic was on the run, accused of her murder. “Juliet? What's wrong?”

She was a fellow Forger, one that he had worked with a few times or offered jobs that came to him when he was too busy or uninterested in. More than that, she was a contact, someone he gave as much trust to as he could afford to.

“Eames,” she repeated. “I'm so sorry. I had heard stories that you all were close.”

“What?” he asked, well aware that Cobb had turned to study him with that squinty gaze that was trying to pry into his skull. Arthur's flat had given them nothing, and now they were back at Cobb's temporary one. It was safer that way. None of them believed Arthur would have spilled any secrets, but Arthur might toss out a few tidbits to keep them from the deeper ones.

“Arthur and Cobb. Haven't you... oh my god, no one has told you,” Juliet whispered across the miles from Rome. Well, Rome was where Eames had last heard she was.

“Told me what? What's happened to Arthur and Cobb?” Eames asked. He fought down the edge of anger and fear. He had known Juliet for years, but he would have reached through the line and strangled the answer out of her if he could have.

Behind him, he heard the click of Cobb opening his cell and dialling. Good man.

Juliet took a watery breath before she began. She hadn't been particularly close to Arthur, and only worked with Cobb twice. She was pretty broken up, something Eames couldn't help notice. “Tri-com's people are claiming that they've had Arthur and Cobb killed. They've released snaps of the bodies.”

Eames pressed a hand to his forehead, shutting his eyes tightly. “Shit.”

“They were kids, Eames! Two little kids!”

Ah, that was it. Juliet had told him one drunken night that she had gotten pregnant at sixteen. A botched abortion had led to her not being able to have kids. When it came to jobs, she had a thing about never taking one that a child might be harmed or upset. Couldn't even Forge one.

“Julie...”

“They put up those cheap snaps of those two murdered children. They were trying to hide behind an older woman and Cobb!”

Eames let her rant, shutting everything else for the space of a few seconds to let everything retreat to a distant roar. Then he could deal with this. When he opened his eyes, he glanced behind him at Cobb. The extractor was speaking in rapid-fire French but didn't look particularly alarmed. Who had Arthur sent them after instead, and how much had it taken to drag that out of him. It didn't matter, Eames decided since he was _far, far_ more imaginative than Arthur was. He could make up his own tortures for when he tracked down those responsible. “Julie... Juliet... what about Arthur? What... I need more information.”

Cobb's voice fell silent behind him, a tiny gasp coming from Ariadne.

Her swallow was clear over the miles as she composed herself. “He had been covered with acid, Eames, down to the bone. His... his face was gone and his hair back to mid-skull. The same with his hands.”

Eames was already planning how he was going to have to ask Cobb for the PASIV. He enough contacts that finding these people, especially if they were sending out pictures and bragging wouldn't be too terribly difficult. There was more than enough money in his bank accounts to get whatever help he would need. Torture in dreams could go on for quite a long time before the mind gave out.

“It was horrid,” Juliet whispered from the phone into his ear. “All that was left on his right hand were bones and his silver ring. Looked like the bloody thing was welded to the it.”

Revenge took a backseat for a moment, a loud tapping echoing through Eames' mind. People were what he did best, studying them and learning their little habits. Like a computer, his mind cross-referenced the sound, the mention and all other factors until it came up with an answer.

She mistook his silence for shock and upset. Everyone knew after whispers of the inception being accomplished who had made up Dominic Cobb's team. “I- Eames, I'm sorry.”

He cut her off quick. “That ring. Did it have drawings all over it? Like birds and people with little blue stones?”

“It did, yeah. Eames, anything I can do to-”

“Who was Tri-com's team? Does anyone know?”

She told him, and Eames grinned to himself.

\-------------------

“Arthur?”

Arthur opened his eyes slowly and immediately regretted it. The room around him swam in his vision, the man before him nothing more than a blurry outline. “What happened?” he slurred out, his tongue feeling large and clumsy in his mouth.

A gentle hand pushed the hair back from his face, lingering too long for Arthur’s tastes. Other than Eames, he disliked being touched on general principle. It made him uncomfortable, feeling as if someone were trying to push themselves into his life. “Stop. Where… where’s...”

Arthur had to stop there. His mind might be spinning like a cheap carny ride, but he had enough sense still in him not to ask where Eames was. Something had happened, hadn't it? There had been someone. Something. What the fuck had happened?

“It’s okay, Arthur. The sickness will pass. You’re not well right now,” that quiet voice told him.

The hand in his hair refused to move away and leave him in peace. Arthur tried to lift a hand to shove it away, something stopping that motion a bare inch after it began. His head lolled to the side, staring stupidly down at his arms. Leather straps with heavy metal buckles laid over his arms and forearms, restraining him. Tugging at them, his mind couldn’t wrap itself around the fact that he was indeed being held down. He was Arthur, Dominic Cobb's pointman. Him getting caught was up there with the sun blowing out. His totem. He needed his totem. Where was it?

The face above him came into view finally. Green eyes watched him intently. Try as he might, Arthur couldn’t quite place the man. There was a sense of _knowing_ who he was, but the name just not coming to mind. “M’ fine. What’s goin’ on?”

The man smiled, tucking his hair behind his ears and drawing the blanket back up around him. “You’re sick, Arthur. I know you don’t think so, but most people in deliriums will walk off ledges insisting that it’s solid ground. I’m taking care of you now. You’ll be just fine eventually. You tried to hurt yourself.”

Arthur frowned, struggling to make his mouth and brain cooperate. Both felt sludgy and unresponsive. _Whatha fuck?_ was all he could think of clearly.

The man shook his head, the back of his hand caressing Arthur’s cheek gently. “I’m going to take care of you from now on. When you’re better, you’ll understand. You were raving about being some sort of dream thief. You were brought here and left. A man named Dominic Cobb signed the papers.”

Turning his head to the side, Arthur tried to bite at the man’s finger, teeth snapping together on empty air as the man laughed quietly. Arthur tugged at his limbs, trying to move his legs or arms. Those hateful bands of leather kept him strapped down. His glazy eyes tried to focus on the man looming over him, hating the look of satisfaction his captor wore. “You're lying,” he slurred out.

The man sighed, tracing a fingertip over Arthur's eyebrow. “No, I'm not. Maybe I need a more aggressive drug therapy. You’re still lost in your delusions. I have to take care of you. When you’re better, you and everyone will understand that I did it for the best, for your own good. You’ll see.”

Arthur ignored him, tugging at the restraints again, stupidly weak. Dom. Dom would never do this. Never. Eames had been with them. Never.

A look of anger finally came to the man’s face, quickly wiped away to smooth calmness. His fingers wandered down Arthur's cheek, avoiding the teeth to grip the pointman’s chin gently. “Your so-called friends knew this was best for you. You've been here for awhile and sometimes have confused moments like this, especially after Cobb comes to visit.”

The hand on Arthur's chin kept his jaws together, keeping him from biting as the blurry man kissed his forehead. He saw the needle in the man’s hand, trying to squirm even as it was touched and then shoved in painfully. Darkness began to creep over his vision as he felt that hateful hand stroking his hair again. Never would he have allowed this. Never would Cobb or Eames or any of them allowed it to go this far.

“Everything will be all right.”

\------------

Yusuf rubbed a hand over his eyes. To Eames, the man looked exhausted. Now if he could only bring himself to care. A part of him still blamed Yusuf for suggesting the arsehole that landed them all in this mess. It wasn't fair, but little was.

“So I'm supposedly dead, and you don't think the body they have that they're claiming is Arthur is him?” Cobb asked. His tone was dull.

None of them had slept in the last three days. It was leaving them all with frayed edges.

“Tri-com's team has dropped off the grid. Their forger, Spires, had a silver ring he wore all the time,” Eames said, staring into his cup of lukewarm tea. “Had some hieroglyphics or some shit all over it. When he got nervous, he would tap it on the edge of the table all the time. Used to drive me batshit. He was about Arthur's size and build, dark hair. The corpse they're claiming is Arthur's is wearing that same ring. Juliet sent me an image of it.”

Cobb nodded, leaning back in his chair. He chanced a glance at the increasingly agitated Ariadne who was in her second hour of trying to coax something out of the computer by cross-referencing 'David' with 'mental institution' and 'Director'. It appeared that there were over two million hits on that.

“Yusuf?”

Another set of tired eyes turned to Cobb as the chemist looked up from the papers he had been scribbling on. “Inside the syringe that you all picked up were trace amounts of two different sedatives. Lorazepam was one of them, commonly used medically to augment the action of the primary anaesthetic drug. It’s known also as the date-rape drug in certain circles.”

Eames kept his eyes on his tea.

“There other was sodium thiopental. It’s an ultra-short acting barbiturate and is most commonly used in the induction phase of general anesthesia. Following intravenous injection the drug rapidly reaches the brain and causes unconsciousness within 30-45 seconds. It can be used to induce a medical coma. Sodium thiopental as the ideal agent to induce coma followed by pancuronium bromide is also one of the most common ways to euthanize a person or pet. Most lethal injections are thiopental with pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.”

“What does this mean, Yusuf? We're not all chemists.”

“The two together can be used as a sedative, but the problem with using thiopental is that it has a long half-life. It acts very fast, like I said, about forty-five to sixty seconds. It displays zero-order elimination kinetics, leading to a prolonged period before consciousness is regained. Then you have a host of problems with these two drugs. It’s a weird combination in the side-effects area. I don’t know why anyone would pick these two together.”

Cobb stared at him. The squint had deepened.

“As with nearly all anesthetic drugs, thiopental causes cardiovascular and respiratory depression resulting in hypotension, apnea and airway obstruction. That means that the victim could die on them, but that’s pretty commonplace. Anyone smart enough to mix this cocktail up would have sense enough to do it carefully and watch the victim. When they come out of it, they’re going to have the usual symptoms of headache, emergence delirium, prolonged sleepiness, and nausea. Emergence delirium is an overly wordy way of saying that when the victim wakes up, they’ll be frightened, confused, maybe suffering from short-term amnesia, thrashing, and so on. Mixing it with lorazepam will increase chances of that amnesia, short or long term. Like I said, it’s the date-rape drug. It messes a person up mentally as well as physically. Put them together, and it’s a nasty combination. Long term, either of these can produce psychological and physical dependence," Yusuf finished in a rush.

“They're trying to mentally break Arthur then,” Eames said. He felt sick. “How long do we have?”

Yusuf shook his head, looking as ill as Eames felt. “I don't know. It doesn't make sense. If they wanted information, this isn't the way to get it. Enough of them, and Arthur won't even remember his name muchless who any of us are or what jobs he's been on.”

“Then why?” asked Cobb.

There was no answer.

\---------------

“Saito?”

Eames lit another cigarette, drawing the sour sharp smoke in and letting it back out. It made him and this whole damned fucked up situation feel normal. It kept him from wanting to lay into Yusuf or Cobb for being stupid and careless enough to let Arthur be kidnapped.

It was now seventy-two hours after Arthur had vanished. The rumours were still flying around the dream-sharing community that Arthur and Dominic Cobb were dead. At Cobb's orders, no one had said anything to the contrary. Cobb's children were protected and hidden. Eight hours of sleep hadn't improved anyone's mood either. For those eight hours, Eames had gotten as drunk as he could and passed out. Now he felt like a dragon had used his mouth for a pisspot and terrorists were currently shooting apart the soft meat of his brain. Contrary to packaging claims, Excedrin Migraine did not relieve all ills.

Lying bastards.

“I understand my pointman has gone missing?” Saito asked from the speakerphone, his polite tone unwavering.

Eames bit his tongue rather than bring up that Arthur was no one's. Except for maybe his. On a good day.

“We need access to the American Medical Association's database,” Cobb said patiently. “We're trying to find a certain psychologist, and...”

“Psychologist or psychiatrist?” Saito asked.

“Psychiatrist,” Yusuf said. “He can prescribe medication. It's the only way he's gotten ahold of these and would be able to hold a directorship.”

Eames believed he might be finding it in himself to forgive Yusuf. He'd know for sure after he made Yusuf buy him a few drinks.

“I see. I believe I can find that out shortly,” Saito replied, still calm and businesslike.

Looks were exchanged around the table.

Ariadne saved Eames from asking when she spoke up. “Mr Saito? You didn't buy the AMA, did you?”

A quiet snort was all the laughter Saito allowed. “No, I did not, although I hold chairs at the Harvard Medical School and Yale School of Medicine. My brother is also a member of that organization. I should have an answer for you soon.”

With that, he hung up leaving them to waste time doing nothing or go back to sleep.

Eames lit another cigarette.

\--------------------

There was a hand in his hair, something that already made Arthur’s lips draw back from his teeth in a snarl. His mind and body still felt stupid and slow, as if he were moving through heavy air. The simple act of turning his head brought a swell of nausea. He flailed at first, feeling water lapping at his chest and shoulders. The fear of drowning rose, made horrifying by the fact that he couldn’t get his limbs to respond properly or his mind to tell him just how he got here, wherever ‘here’ was.

“Shhh. Shhh. It’s all right, Arthur. I’m here.”

That hated hand was back in his hair, scrubbing gently. The soapy taste of shampoo slid into his mouth as water was dumped unexpectedly on his head. The realization that someone was washing him was slow in coming, Arthur’s hand on the side of the tub seeming too weak to hold on. The secondary knowledge that he was nude before someone else brought a wave of disgust through him.

“G’off,” he slurred through numbed lips, trying to pull away.

Hands that seemed impossibly strong gripped onto his shoulder, pulling him back until he rested against the tub’s sloped side. “Calm down, Arthur. It’s just the medication. I’m here. It’s all right.”

Pain flared though his arms, starting at the wrist and tracing hot lines up to his elbows. Lifting a hand and trying to focus on his skin, Arthur felt dim alarm at seeing a scabbed and stitched red line running from his wrist up to his elbow. “What…”

“You tried to kill yourself. Don’t you remember? I found you, wrists slashed clear up. I didn’t know if you were going to make it for awhile there,” the man told him.

He could only stare with a stupefied astonishment at the marks. Suicide? Him? Even with his mind stuck in a low gear, Arthur doubted such. There was nothing that could reduce him to such a pathetic state of taking his own life, of _giving up_ and letting his enemies win by killing himself. He would never let the world and the people in it beat him. He would keep living if only to because it did piss them off. “No.”

Arthur could feel himself being pulled up and back, pain slowly registering again as he tried to get his feet under him and help some. Resting on the step as towels were rubbed briskly across his body, Arthur tried to puzzle this out. What had happened? Where was he? There was a tattered memory of being in a warehouse somewhere, but everything after that was blurry. “I want... Cobb. Where is he?”

There was a brief silence before the man who kept behind him replied. “Cobb was the one who signed the commitment papers for you. I _told_ you that. It was for the best. You tried to kill yourself over you delusions that you're in some sort of dream. You need help. Even Dominic Cobb realizes that.”

“No.” It was as simple as that for Arthur. Dom would never allow such a thing, and even if he did, there was Eames. Eames would kill him first. The part about him trying to commit suicide was laughable, something even his slow mind could comprehend. The sensation of someone toweling him off was not a welcome one. He didn’t want to think about some stranger taking those liberties with him as he threw an elbow backwards in defense. There was a moment of short-lived pleasure at feeling something impact with the point of his elbow, pain flaring in a sharp and then rapidly dulling ache.

“ _That_ was most unnecessary, Arthur,” a voice on the edge of anger hissed in his ear.

The towel was on his hair then, rubbing too hard and pulling at the strands. He slapped a hand upwards, trying to free himself. Limbs that felt trapped in molasses moved too slow and hit too weakly, more of his hair parting from the scalp before the towel was taken away. Vision blurry, he tried to concentrate on the far wall. That sensation of nausea rose again, weakness coming in a tide. “Let go.”

The hands on him were harder this time, fingers pinching into his skin. Pain was slow to make itself known with the haze on his mind, but when it came through, it hurt. Clothing was shoved onto him roughly, little patience shown for his inept state.

“Arthur, you need to learn that you’re not in control here. I’m taking care of you because you can’t take care of yourself. You tried to kill yourself. I can’t and won’t let that happen. No one else seems to give a damn about you but me. Only me. Just me.”

Clothing on now, something loose that didn’t feel like any of his own, Arthur found himself shoved and prodded by those demanding hands down a hallway and into another. The lights dazzled his eyes, leaving him feeling as if he were going to fall or vomit. Every time he tried to stop, he was shoved again, pushed to hurry. His feet tangled with each other, the wall not kind when he tripped and hit it. Sliding down to the floor, Arthur tried to sink his nails into the plaster, to try to ground himself. The world kept spinning around him, lines fuzzy where they should have been straight. There was a nagging tone to the speaker’s voice that he didn’t like, reminding him of a child’s that is becoming angry because someone else refuses to play by the rules of a game.

“Now look what you’ve gone and done, Arthur. You need me to take care of you. You’ll see that soon enough. You’ll understand. It’s just that you’re sick right now. I’ll find the right combination of medications soon. Trial and error, trial and error.”

A hand patted his head gently, Arthur turning to try and bite at it again. Like the rest of him, even his head was slow and stupid, reacting too late. His teeth clicked over empty air. The shadowy form of a man crouched down next to him. He could make out a fall of brown hair, green eyes watching him intently.

“Don… don’t touch me,” Arthur hissed out, waving a hand at the man.

The fingers in his hair tightened cruelly, drawing his head back. Oh yes, the man’s eyes were definitely green, showing what he guessed was anger clearly this close. Lips touched against his cheek. The hit Arthur attempted at his captor’s face this time resulted in his wrist captured and squeezed hard enough that he could feel the bones grating against each other. The cut lines in his flesh informed him with a sharp stab that pierced his drugged fogginess that they hurt as well. Something warm and wet trickled down his arm, tracing a slimy trail downward to his elbow.

“You’ve gone and opened your wound again, Arthur,” that voice informed him, talking as if its owner weren’t the one hurting him and causing all this. “I’ll need to fix those _again_. You need to stop hurting yourself like this.”

The sick sensation became too much, Arthur leaning his head back into the hair-pulling hand with his eyes closing. It was better than disgracing himself by throwing up. The fingers in his hair loosened some, cupping the back of his hand with a gentleness he couldn’t believe given a few minutes earlier. Those lips pressed again to his cheek, drifting to his ear.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

Arthur swallowed thickly, smelling faintly the blood in the air. How badly had he pulled those wounds back open? “They'll... they will kill you. Eames will kill you.”

He felt the hand in his hair grip harder again right before the flash of white light in his head when his head was thrown hard into the wall.

\-------

Geoff Ashton forced his hand to unclench from Arthur’s hair, cramps seizing the muscles.

_I lost my temper._

No, it wasn’t that. Arthur had done this. He kept refusing treatment and trying to hurt himself. Arthur was sick, so very sick, and it was getting worse just as he had predicted. Getting his arms around the unconscious man’s bulk, he began the slow task of moving him back to his room. Arthur wasn’t the heaviest man in the world, but any dead weight took time getting from point A to point B.

Within fifteen minutes, he had Arthur back in his bed. A couple of stitches and some bandaging repaired most of the damage although the man’s face remained scarily pale. Given Arthur’s suicide attempt last night, it didn’t do for him to be losing blood right now.

 _How did a man restrained try to commit suicide?_ that nasty little voice in his head asked.

Bandaging the already healing cuts gently, Geoff refused to think about that. Somehow Arthur had. Any images of himself sneaking in and making those cuts with his own knife were pushed down and condemned to being forgotten. He would never have made such cruel slices on Arthur’s pale and thin skin, never take the chance of cutting too deeply and nicking a vital vein. He was a psychiatrist, the healer of the mentally ill. Doctor Geoff Ashton would never do such a thing. Somehow, someway, Arthur had gotten loose during the early morning hours and done this damage to himself.

_With your letter opener? How did he manage to get out of his restraints, out of his room, get up to your office, back to his room, and then cut his own wrists in precisely the right medical way that avoided everything vital in order to bleed himself out slowly and painfully?_

“Shut up!” Geoff hissed as he cut the bandage and fixed it in place. “He did it. I’m a doctor. I don’t hurt people. It’s part of the Oath. He’s sick. Very sick. When he’s better, he’ll realize all that I’ve done for him, that I was the only one who cared enough.”

_And what?_

“And then... then, he’ll... Arthur will know that I care about him. We’ll be fine. Both of us,” he whispered to himself. The purple shadow of forming bruises across Arthur’s skin that his hands had caused was ignored. He had used what force was necessary to ensure Arthur’s safety. He had done what he’d needed to in order to make sure that Arthur was safe and taken care of. No one could fault him on that.

Exquisite care was taken in combing Arthur’s hair, ignoring the few strands that came away from the scalp.

 _Little rough, weren’t you?_ that snide voice in his head asked again with false sympathy.

“I was not,” Geoff muttered, gently sweeping the hair back from Arthur’s face. “It’s normal. The average person loses a hundred to a hundred and fifty hairs a day. Given the stress he’s been under, it could be more. Any psychologist can tell you that stress leads to hair loss. I didn’t do any of this. He did this to himself.”

Administering Arthur’s next dose, Geoff stood by his bedside, gazing down at the man thoughtfully. How long he stayed like that, even Geoff couldn’t say. Time was starting to become an elastic thing. He’d think he was doing something for only a few minutes only to discover that an hour or two had passed. For now, he left the restraints unbuckled. There was nothing in the fully padded room that Arthur could hurt himself on should he get out of bed. The bed’s frame was wrapped in the same thick padding that covered the walls, ceiling, and floor except where the camera hung from the ceiling. Eight feet up, he knew that Arthur’s vertigo from the medication would keep him from getting to it. The sink and commode were insulated as well, as much as could be done. If Arthur fell, he might crack his head on one of those. Gnawing on his lower lip in indecision, Geoff didn’t notice the bead of blood welling up from between his teeth.

“I’ll just have to take the chance. I should be back before you wake up though. Some dinner and fresh clothes, and I’ll be right back. I promise. I wouldn’t leave you here alone if I had the choice, but you see, a friend of mine’s plane blew up a few minutes after take off. He was going to go to go on a cruise with his family for a vacation. It seems that somehow a stick of dynamite got onboard, and it as set to go off when the plane reached a height just before the cargo hold was automatically pressurized. He was the other director of the institute,” Geoff said, seeing that Arthur was interested in how his day was going despite his unconscious state.

 _The doll you gave his daughter, hmm?_ that nasty little voice asked again.

“It was a terrible, terrible accident. You never know what’s going to get into children’s toys these days. I wouldn’t know anything about that myself, but you would be quite surprised what drug dealers and junkies would do to get their hands on the more powerful psychiatric drugs. Why a two month supply of the more powerful painkillers and hallucinogens would easily pay for such a thing! It’s shameful how they deal death so callously.”

Geoff smiled gently, patting Arthur’s hand and touching a kiss to his temple.

“Don’t you worry yourself so. I’ll be back before you know it. I bet you would love one of those egg nog milkshakes. No alcohol for you with your medication, but I think a treat wouldn’t hurt you. Now you sleep, and when I get back, we can have a little celebration of our own.”

Stepping out of Arthur’s room, Geoff locked it carefully behind him and powered down the lights. It wouldn’t do for Arthur to be kept awake by them. From Arthur’s cell to the outer door was a tiny room that was barely big enough for two people to stand in. As usual, Geoff stood silently, studying the two-way mirror in front of him. This particular patient room of the institute was made with high profile patients in mind, those that the paparazzi would want to ruin the reputations of. Only the directors... now director... knew of its existence. Families usually hired their own doctors to oversee those rich enough to be here. Studying the hallway and seeing no one, Geoff pushed the edge of the mirror, swinging it outwards. Still humming cheerfully, he took the keypad from his pocket and set it on that edge of the mirror when he shut it. Punching in the code, he heard the low click of the mirror’s mechanism locking it onto the wall once more.

“There we go,” he murmured to himself, swiping a hand over his lips. The small bloody smear it left on his sleeve was easily ignored. The shirt was red after all. It was Arthur's favourite colour. Pulling the keypad off the mirror, he dropped it into his pocket and headed down the hallway.


End file.
